Wet Weather at Cobb's Island
THE season for shooting snipe has so far proved a failure at this place. For thirteen consecutive days have the floodgates of heaven been let loose upon this devoted isle and the rain it raineth every day. It seems as if there has been enough water falling on this hundred and sixty acres the last month to furnish the whole of America and irrigate the dry Sahara desert. Every morning the sun would break through the clouds and the deluded sportsmen woud don their shooting-suits and with their trusty breech-loaders sally forth with the idea that the sun must shine out at last and that the reservoir up above must perforce be dry by this time.
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
As Mr. Dick Swiveller patheticaly observes, "Our fairest hopes bloom but to decay," and every evening, regularly as clock work, a storm would burst that sent the sportsmen dripping and shivering back home.
This continued tempestuous weather has kept the robin-snipe away, and where generally there are a thousand, now not a dozen can be seen. The graybacks and willet are plentiful and the curlew unusually abundant.
Among the arrivals last month were the following sportsmen: C. B. Slingluff, James Hunter, Morris Thomas, E. B. Whitman, S. T. Hayward, J. D. Mallory, H. P. Lucas, James Caffron and Hamilton Easter, Mr. Newton Dexter, of Providence, R. I., and the yacht Elfin. All of these gentlemen have by twos and threes left "disgruntled" and disgusted for their homes, except, indeed, Mr. Easter, who intends to fight this confounded weather if it takes all the summer.
As I write this the rain if falling, not in showers nor in gusts, but in a relentless, steady, business-like pour, that shows it has no intention of letting up. The island is wreathed in a dim fog and everything looks desolate in the extreme. Indoors it is decidedly blue, and I for one knock under to this weather and wish I could go to some clime where the earth is nourished by evening's dews and not by a three weeks' steady, persistent shower-bath.
Elkenny Cobb the younger has just returned from the neighborhood of Smith Island (where he has anchored hs sloop) with forty dozen birds -- mostly curlew and graybacks -- all the result of his own gun. He shoots for the market, and can sit in his blind all day, rain or no rain. It is a heap of difference digging for a woodchuck for sport and excavating for him because you are out of meat.
The island will be open for guests the first of June. It has been improved in many ways.
CHASSEUR.
COBB'S ISLAND, Va., May 15.